In the story of humanity is replete with myths and legends. Mythological characters often are representative of entities that lived on the Earth thousands of years ago. Some of these entities were referred to as creator gods who seeded this planet creating the environment in which we experience in the magic and illusion of time and emotion.

All of mythology has a basis in the creational myths of each culture, representing by the duality of our reality. Every culture has its myths about pantheons of gods - good vs. evil , duality, reflected in each story, yet all the same, and all the same creational force. Hidden within mythological tales are not only creational story, but prophecies about the end of time.

A myth is symbolic narrative, usually of unknown origin and at least partly traditional, that ostensibly relates actual events and that is especially associated with religious belief. It is distinguished from symbolic behavior (cult, ritual) and symbolic places or objects (temples, icons). Myths are specific accounts of
gods or superhuman beings involved in extraordinary events or circumstances in a time that is
unspecified but which is understood as existing apart from ordinary human experience. The term
mythology denotes both the study of myth and the body of myths belonging to a particular religious tradition.

As with all religious symbolism, there is no attempt to justify mythic narratives or even to render them
plausible. Every myth presents itself as an authoritative, factual account, no matter how much the
narrated events are at variance with natural law or ordinary experience. By extension from this primary
religious meaning, the word myth may also be used more loosely to refer to an ideological belief when
that belief is the object of a quasi-religious faith; an example would be the Marxist eschatological myth of
the withering away of the state.

While the outline of myths from a past period or from a society other than one's own can usually be
seen quite clearly, to recognize the myths that are dominant in one's own time and society is always
difficult. This is hardly surprising, because a myth has its authority not by proving itself but by
presenting itself. In this sense the authority of a myth indeed "goes without saying," and the myth can be
outlined in detail only when its authority is no longer unquestioned but has been rejected or overcome in
some manner by another, more comprehensive myth.

The word myth derives from the Greek mythos, which has a range of meanings from "word," through
"saying" and "story," to "fiction"; the unquestioned validity of mythos can be contrasted with logos, the
word whose validity or truth can be argued and demonstrated. Because myths narrate fantastic events
with no attempt at proof, it is sometimes assumed that they are simply stories with no factual basis, and
the word has become a synonym for falsehood or, at best, misconception. In the study of religion,
however, it is important to distinguish between myths and stories that are merely untrue.

The first part of this article discusses the nature, study, functions, cultural impact, and types of myth,
taking into account the various approaches to the subject offered by modern branches of knowledge. In
the second part, the specialized topic of the role of animals and plants in myth is examined in some
detail. The mythologies of specific cultures are covered in the articles Greek religion, Roman religion,
and Germanic religion.

The Nature, Functions, and Types of Myth

Myth has existed in every society. Indeed, it would seem to be a basic constituent
of human culture. Because the variety is so great, it is difficult to generalize about
the nature of myths. But it is clear that in their general characteristics and in their
details a people's myths reflect, express, and explore the people's self-image. The
study of myth is thus of central importance in the study both of individual societies
and of human culture as a whole.

Relation of Myths to Other Narrative Forms

In Western culture there are a number of literary or narrative genres that scholars
have related in different ways to myths. Examples are fables, fairy tales, folktales,
sagas, epics, legends, and etiologic tales (which refer to causes or explain why a
thing is the way it is).

Another form of tale, the parable, differs from myth in its purpose and character. Even in the West, however, there is no agreed definition of any of these genres, and some scholars question whether multiplying
categories of narrative is helpful at all, as opposed to working with a very general
concept such as the traditional tale. Non-Western cultures apply classifications
that are different both from the Western categories and from one another. Most,
however, make a basic distinction between "true" and "fictitious" narratives, with
"true" ones corresponding to what in the West would be called myths.

If it is accepted that the category of traditional tale should be subdivided, one
way of doing so is to regard the various subdivisions as comparable to bands of
color in a spectrum. Within this figurative spectrum, there will be similarities and
analogies between myth and folktale or between myth and legend or between
fairy tale and folktale. In the section that follows, it is assumed that useful
distinctions can be drawn between different categories. It should, however, be
remembered throughout that these classifications are far from rigid and that, in
many cases, a given tale might be plausibly assigned to more than one category.

Fables

The word fable derives from the Latin word fabula, which originally meant about the same as the Greek mythos; like mythos, it came to mean a fictitious or untrue story. Myths, in contrast, are not presented as fictitious or untrue.

Fables, like some myths, feature personified animals or natural objects as
characters. Unlike myths, however, fables almost always end with an explicit moral
message, and this highlights the characteristic feature of fables--namely, that they
are instructive tales that teach morals about human social behavior. Myths, by
contrast, tend to lack this directly didactic aspect, and the sacred narratives that
they embody are often hard to translate into direct prescriptions for action in
everyday human terms.

Another difference between fables and myths relates to a
feature of the narratives that they present. The context of a typical fable will be
unspecific as to time and space; e.g., "A fox and a goose met at a pool." A typical
myth, on the other hand, will be likely to identify by name the god or hero
concerned in a given exploit and to specify details of geography and genealogy;
e.g., "Oedipus was the son of Laius, the king of Thebes."

Fairy Tales

The term fairy tale, if taken literally, should refer only to stories about fairies, a class of supernatural and sometimes malevolent beings--often believed to be of
diminutive size--who were thought by people in medieval and post medieval Europe to inhabit a kingdom of their own; a literary expression of this belief can be found in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.

The term fairy tale, however, is normally used to refer to a much wider class of narrative, namely stories (directed above all at an audience of children) about an individual, almost always young, who confronts strange or magical events: examples are "Jack and the Beanstalk," "Cinderella," and "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs." The modern concept of the fairy tale seems not to be found earlier than the 18th century in Europe, but the narratives themselves have earlier analogues much farther afield, notably in the Indian Katha-saritsagara (The Ocean of Story) and in The Thousand and One Nights.

Like myths, fairy tales present extraordinary beings and events. Unlike myths--but like fables--fairy tales tend to be placed in a setting that is geographically and temporally vague and might begin with the words "Once upon a time there was a handsome prince ... " A myth about a prince, by contrast, would be likely to name him and to specify his lineage, since such details might be of collective importance (for example, with reference to issues of property inheritance or the relative status of different families) to the social group among which the myth was told.

Folktales

There is much disagreement among scholars as to how to define the folktale;
consequently, there is disagreement about the relation between folktale and myth.
One view of the problem is that of the American folklorist Stith Thompson, who
regarded myths as one type of folktale; according to this approach, the particular
characteristic of myth is that its narratives deal with sacred events that happened
"in the beginning."

Other scholars either consider folktale a subdivision of myth or
regard the two categories as distinct but overlapping. The latter view is taken by
the British classicist Geoffrey S. Kirk, who in Myth: Its Meaning and Functions in
Ancient and Other Cultures (1970) uses the term myth to denote stories with an
underlying purpose beyond that of simple story-telling and the term folktale to
denote stories that reflect simple social situations and play on ordinary fears and
desires.

Examples of folktale motifs are encounters between ordinary, often
humble, human beings and supernatural adversaries such as witches, giants, or
ogres; contests to win a bride; and attempts to overcome a wicked stepmother
or jealous sisters. But these typical folktale themes occur also in stories normally
classified as myths, and there must always be a strong element of arbitrariness in
assigning a motif to a particular category.

A different and important aspect of the problem of defining a folktale relates to
the historical origin of the concept. As with the notion of folklore, the notion of
folktale has its roots in the late 18th century. From that period until the middle of
the 19th century, many European thinkers of a nationalist persuasion argued that
stories told by ordinary people constituted a continuous tradition reaching back
into the nation's past.

Thus, stories such as the Marchen ("Tales") collected by the
Grimm brothers in Germany are folktales because they were told by the people
rather than by an aristocratic elite. This definition of folktale introduces a new
criterion for distinguishing between myth and folktale--namely, what class of
person tells the story--but it by no means removes all the problems of
classification. Just as the distinction between folk and aristocracy cannot be
transferred from medieval Europe to tribal Africa or classical Greece without risk
of distortion, so the importing of a distinction between myth and folktale on the
later European model is extremely problematic.

Sagas and Epics

The word saga is often used in a generalized and loose way to refer to any
extended narrative re-creation of historical events. A distinction is thus sometimes
drawn between myths (set in a semi divine world) and sagas (more realistic and
more firmly grounded in a specific historical setting). This rather vague use of
saga is best avoided, however, since the word can more usefully retain the
precise connotation of its original context.

The word saga is Old Norse and means
"what is said." The sagas are a group of medieval Icelandic prose narratives; the
principal sagas date from the 13th century and relate the deeds of Icelandic
heroes who lived during the 10th and 11th centuries. If the word saga is
restricted to this Icelandic context, at least one of the possible terminological
confusions over words for traditional tales is avoided.

While saga in its original sense is a narrative type confined to a particular time and
place, epics are found worldwide. Examples can be found in the ancient world (the
Iliad and Odyssey of Homer), in medieval Europe (the Nibelungenlied), and in
modern times (the Serbo-Croatian epic poetry recorded in the 1930s). Among the
many non-European examples are the Indian Mahabharata and the Tibetan Gesar
epic.

Epic is similar to saga in that both narrative forms look back to an age of
heroic endeavor, but it differs from saga in that epics are almost always
composed in poetry (with a few exceptions such as Kazak epic and the Turkish
Book of Dede Korkut). The relation between epic and myth is not easy to pin
down, but it is in general true that epics characteristically incorporate mythical
events and persons. An example is the ancient Mesopotamian epic of Gilgamesh,
which includes, among many mythical episodes, an account of the meeting between
the hero Gilgamesh and Utnapishtim, the only man to have attained immortality and
sole survivor (with his wife) of the flood sent by the gods. Myth is thus a prime
source of the material on which epic draws.

Legends

In common usage the word legend usually characterizes a traditional tale thought
to have a historical basis, as in the legends of King Arthur or Robin Hood. In this
view, a distinction may be drawn between myth (which refers to the supernatural
and the sacred) and legend (which is grounded in historical fact). Thus, some
writers on the Iliad would distinguish between the legendary aspects (e.g., heroes
performing actions possible for ordinary humans) and the mythical aspects (e.g.,
episodes involving the gods).

But the distinction between myth and legend must
be used with care. In particular, because of the assumed link between legend and
historical fact, there may be a tendency to refer to narratives that correspond to
one's own beliefs as legends, while exactly comparable stories from other
traditions may be classified as myths; hence a Christian might refer to stories
about the miraculous deeds of a saint as legends, while similar stories about a
pagan healer might be called myths. As in other cases, it must be remembered
that the boundaries between terms for traditional narratives are fluid, and that
different writers employ them in quite different ways.

Parables

Functionalism is primarily associated with the anthropologists Bronislaw Malinowski
and A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, however. Both ask not what the origin of any given social
behavior may be but how it contributes to maintaining the system of which it is a
part. In this view, in all types of society, every aspect of life--every custom, belief,
or idea--makes its own special contribution to the continued effective working of
the whole society. Functionalism has had a wide appeal to anthropologists in
Britain and the United States, especially as an interpretation of myth as integrated
with other aspects of society and as supporting existing social relationships.

The term myth is not normally applied to narratives that have as their explicit
purpose the illustration of a doctrine or standard of conduct. Instead, the term
parable, or illustrative tale, is used. Familiar examples of such narratives are the
parables of the New Testament. Parables have a considerable role also in Sufism
(Islamic mysticism), rabbinic (Jewish biblical interpretive) literature, Hasidism
(Jewish pietism), and Zen Buddhism. That parables are essentially non-mythological
is clear because the point made by the parable is known or supposed to be
known from another source. Parables have a more subservient function than
myths. They may clarify something to an individual or a group but do not take on
the revelatory character of myth.

Etiologic Tales

Etiologic tales are very close to myth, and some scholars regard them as a particular type of myth rather than as a separate category. In modern usage the
term etiology is used to refer to the description or assignment of causes (Greek aitia). Accordingly, an etiologic tale explains the origin of a custom, state of affairs, or natural feature in the human or divine world. Many tales explain the origin of a particular rock or mountain.

Others explain iconographic features, such as the Hindu narrative ascribing the blue neck of the god Siva to a poison he drank in primordial times. The etiologic theme often seems to be added to a mythical narrative as an afterthought. In other words, the etiology is not the distinctive characteristic of myth.

Approaches to the Study of Myth and Mythology

The importance of studying myth to provide a key to a human society is a matter
of historical record. In the middle of the 19th century, for instance, a newly
appointed British governor of New Zealand, Sir George Grey, was confronted by
the problem of how to come to terms with the Maori, who were hostile to the
British. He learned their language, but that proved insufficient for an understanding
of the way in which they reasoned and argued. In order to be able to conduct
negotiations satisfactorily, he found it necessary to study the Maori's mythology,
to which they made frequent reference.

Other government officials and Christian missionaries of the 19th and 20th centuries made similar efforts to understand the mythologies of nations or tribes so as to facilitate communication. Such studies
were more than a means to an end, whether efficient administration or conversion;
they amounted to the discovery that myths present a model or charter for man's
behavior and that the world of myth provides guidance for crucial elements in
human existence--war and peace, life and death, truth and falsehood, good and
evil. In addition to such practically motivated attempts to understand myth,
theorists and scholars from many disciplines have interested themselves in the
study of the subject.

A close study of myth has developed in the West, especially since the 18th century. Much of its material has come from the study of the Greek and Roman classics, from which it has also derived some of its methods of
interpretation.

The growth of philosophy in ancient Greece furthered allegorical interpretations of myth--i.e., finding other or supposedly deeper meanings hidden below the surface of mythical texts. Such meanings were usually seen as involving natural phenomena or human values. Related to this was a tendency toward rationalism, especially when those who studied myths employed false etymologies.

Rationalism in this context connotes the scrutiny of myths in such a way as to make sense of the statements contained in them without taking literally their references to gods, monsters, or the supernatural. Thus, the ancient writer Palaiphatos interpreted the story of Europa (carried off to Crete on the back of a handsome bull, which was actually Zeus in disguise) as that of a woman abducted by a Cretan called Tauros, the Greek word for bull; and Skylla, the bestial and cannibalistic creature who attacked Odysseus' ship according to Homer's Odyssey, was by the same process of rationalizing interpreted as simply the name of a pirate ship. Of special and long-lasting influence in the history of the interpretation of myth was Euhemerism (named after Euhemerus, a Greek writer who flourished about 300 BC), according to which certain gods were originally great people venerated because of their benefactions to mankind.

The early Church Fathers adopted an attitude of modified Euhemerism, according
to which classical mythology was to be explained in terms of mere men who had
been raised to superhuman, demonic status because of their deeds. By this
means, Christians were able to incorporate myths from the culturally authoritative
pagan past into a Christian framework while defusing their religious
significance--the gods became ordinary humans.

The Middle Ages did not develop new theoretical perspectives on myth, nor, despite some elaborate works of
historical and etymological erudition, did the Renaissance. In both periods,
interpretations in terms of allegory and Euhemerism tended to predominate.

In early 18th-century Italy, Giambattista Vico, a thinker now considered the forerunner of all writers on ethnology, or the study of culture in human societies,
built on traditional scholarship--especially in law and philosophy--to make the first
clear case for the role of man's creative imagination in the formation of distinct
myths at successive cultural stages.

His work, which was most notably expressed in his Scienza Nuova (1725; The New Science of Giambattista Vico), had no influence in his own century. Instead, the notion that pagan myths were distortions of the biblical revelation (first expressed in the Renaissance) continued to find
favor.

Nevertheless, Enlightenment philosophy, reports from voyages of discovery, and missionary reports (especially the Jesuits' accounts of North American Indians) contributed to scholarship and fostered greater objectivity. Bernhard Le Bovier de Fontenelle, a French scholar, compared Greek and American
Indian myths and suggested that there was a universal human predisposition toward mythology.
In De l'origine des fables (1724; "On the Origin of Fables") he attributed the absurdities (as he saw them) of myths to the fact that the stories grew up among an earlier, more primitive human society.

About 1800 the Romantics' growing fascination with language, the postulation of an Indo-European
language family, the study of Sanskrit, and the growth of comparative studies, especially in history and philology, were all part of a trend that included the study of myth.

The relevance of Indo-European studies to an understanding of Greek and Roman
mythology was carried to an extreme in the work of Friedrich Max Muller, a German
Orientalist who moved to Britain and undertook important research on comparative
linguistics. In his view, expressed in such works as Comparative Mythology (1856),
the mythology of the original Indo-European peoples had consisted of allegorical
stories about the workings of nature, in particular such features as the sky, the
Sun, and the dawn.

In the course of time, though, these original meanings had been
lost (through, in Muller's notorious phrasing, a "disease of language"), so that the
myths no longer told in a "rationally intelligible" way of phenomena in the natural
world but instead appeared to describe the "irrational" activities of gods, heroes,
nymphs, and others. For instance, one Greek myth related the pursuit of the
nymph Daphne by the god Phoebus Apollo. Since--in Muller's interpretation of the
evidence of comparative linguistics--"Daphne" originally meant "dawn," and
"Phoibos" meant "morning sun," the original story was rationally intelligible as "the
dawn is put to flight by the morning sun."

One of the problems with this view is, of course, that it fails to account for the fact that the Greeks continued to tell this and similar stories long after their supposed meanings had been forgotten; and
they did so, moreover, in the manifest belief that the stories referred, not to
nature, but precisely to gods, heroes, and other mythical beings.

Interest in myth was greatly stimulated in Germany by Friedrich von Schelling's
philosophy of mythology, which argued that myth was a form of expression,
characteristic of a particular stage in human development, through which men
imagine the Absolute (for Schelling an all-embracing unity in which all differences
are reconciled). Scholarly interest in myth has continued into the 20th century.
Many scholars have adopted a psychological approach because of interest
aroused by the theories of Sigmund Freud. Subsequently, new approaches in
sociology and anthropology have continued to encourage the study of myth.

Allegorical

An example of an allegorical interpretation would be that given by an ancient
commentator for the Iliad, book 20, verse 67. Referring to an episode in which the
gods fight each other, the commentator cites critics who have explained the
hostilities between the gods allegorically as an opposition between elements--dry
against wet, hot against cold, light against heavy. Thus, the gods Apollo, Helios,
and Hephaestus represent fire, and the god Poseidon and the river Scamander
represent water. Similarly, the goddess Athena is interpreted as wisdom/sense,
the god Ares as the absence of that quality, the goddess Aphrodite as desire,
and the god Hermes as reason. An allegorical interpretation of a myth could be
said to posit a one-to-one correspondence between mythical "clothing" and the
ideas being so clothed. This approach tends to limit the meaning of a myth, whereas that meaning may in reality be multiple, operating on several levels.

Romantic

In the late 18th century artists and intellectuals came increasingly to emphasize the role of the emotions in human life and, correspondingly, to play down the importance of reason (which had been regarded as supremely important by thinkers of the Enlightenment). Those involved in the new movement were known as Romantics. The Romantic movement had profound implications for the study of myth. Myths--both the stories from Greek and Roman antiquity and contemporary folktales--were regarded by the Romantics as repositories of experience far more vital and powerful than those obtainable from what was felt to be the artificial art and poetry of the aristocratic civilization of contemporary Europe.

This new attitude is illustrated in a work of the German critic and philosopher Johann Gottfried von Herder entitled "Auszug aus einem Briefwechsel uber Ossian und die Lieder alter Volker" (1773; "Extract from a Correspondence on Ossian and the Songs of Ancient Peoples"). Ossian is the name of an Irish warrior-poet whose Gaelic songs were supposedly translated and presented to the world by James Macpherson in the 1760s. Although largely the work of Macpherson himself, these songs made a colossal impact when they were published. Herder believed that the more "savage," that is, the more "alive" and "freedom-loving" a people (ein Volk) was, the more alive and free its songs would be. In opposition to the culture of the educated, Herder exalted the Kultur des Volkes ("culture of the people").

In 1769 Herder abandoned his job as a schoolteacher and took a boat from Riga, on the Baltic, to Nantes, on the Atlantic coast of France. In Journal meiner Reise im Jahre 1769 (1769; Journal of My Travels in the Year 1769), a description of the experience, he wrote:

"In everything [on board ship] there is experience to illuminate the original era of the myths. Then [i.e., in antiquity] every man, ignorant of nature, listened for signs and had to listen for them. Then, Jupiter's lightning was terrifying--as indeed it is [i.e., now] on the Ocean. There are a thousand new and more natural explanations of mythology if one reads, say, Orpheus, Homer, Pindar on board ship."

In other words, for Herder ancient myths were the natural expressions of the concerns that would have confronted the ancients; and those concerns were the very ones that, according to Herder, still confronted the Volk--e.g., ordinary sailors--in Herder's own day.

Comparative

Since the Romantic movement, all study of myth has been comparative, although comparative attempts were made earlier. The prevalence of the comparative approach has meant that since the 19th century even the most specialized studies have made generalizations about more than one tradition or at the very least have had to take comparative works by others into account. Indeed, for there to be any philosophical inquiry into the nature and function of myth at all, there must exist a body of data about myths across a range of societies. Such data would not exist without a comparative approach.

Folkloric

The classic folklore approach is that of Wilhelm Mannhardt, a German scholar, who attempted to collect data on the "lower mythology," which he considered to be more or less homogeneous in ancient and popular peasant traditions and basic to all formation of myth. Mannhardt saw sufficient analogies and similarities between the ancient and modern data to permit use of the latter in interpreting the former. Like Herder, he saw the source of mythology in the traditions passed on among the Volk. He collected information not only about popular stories but also about popular customs.

He interpreted ancient Greek rituals by relating them to customs
of the agricultural peoples of northern Europe, proposing this link in his book
Antike Wald- und Feldkulte (1877; "Ancient Wood and Field Cults"). Other people
who examined myth from the folklore standpoint included Sir James Frazer, the
British anthropologist, the brothers Grimm (Jacob, who influenced Mannhardt, and
Wilhelm), who are well-known for their collections of folklore, and Stith Thompson,
who is notable for his classification of folk literature, particularly his massive
Motif-Index of Folk-Literature (1955). The Grimms shared Herder's passion for the
poetry and stories of the Volk. Their importance stems in part from the academic
diligence and meticulousness that they brought to the recording and study of
popular tradition. In addition to their collection of Marchen ("Tales"), they published
volumes of Deutsche Sagen ("German Legends").

These were tales that purported to record actual events and that were ostensibly set in a specific place and period, as opposed to the "once-upon-a-time-in-the-forest" setting characteristic
of the Marchen. Collecting and classifying mythological themes have remained the
principal activities of the folklore approach.

Functionalist

One of the leading exponents of the functionalist approach to myth was the French sociologist Marcel Mauss, who used the phrase "total social facts" in reference to religious symbols and myths and their irreducibility in terms of other functions. In his Essai sur le don (1925; The Gift), Mauss referred to a system of gift giving to be found in traditional, preindustrial societies. Observing that there was a mass of complex data on the subject, Mauss continued: in these "early" societies, social phenomena are not discrete; each phenomenon contains all the threads of which the social fabric is composed. In these total social phenomena, as we propose to call them, all kinds of institutions find simultaneous expression: religious, legal, moral, and economic.

In his introduction to the English edition Edward Evans-Pritchard commented on that passage:

"Total" is the key word of the Essay. The exchanges of archaic societies which he examines are total social movements or activities. They are at the same time economic, juridical, moral, aesthetic, religious, mythological phenomena. Their meaning can therefore only be grasped if they are viewed as a complex concrete reality.

Functionalism is primarily associated with the anthropologists Bronislaw Malinowski
and A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, however. Both ask not what the origin of any given social
behavior may be but how it contributes to maintaining the system of which it is a
part. In this view, in all types of society, every aspect of life--every custom, belief,
or idea--makes its own special contribution to the continued effective working of
the whole society. Functionalism has had a wide appeal to anthropologists in
Britain and the United States, especially as an interpretation of myth as integrated
with other aspects of society and as supporting existing social relationships.

Structuralist

Structuralist approaches to myth are based on the analogy of myth to language. Just as a language is composed of significant oppositions (e.g., between phonemes, the constituent sounds of the language), so myths are formed out of significant oppositions between certain terms and categories.

Structuralist analysis aims at uncovering what it sees as the logic of myth. It is argued that
supposedly primitive thought is logically consistent but that the terms of this logic
are not those with which modern Western culture is familiar. Instead they are
terms related to items of the everyday world in which the "primitive" culture
exists. This logic is usually based on empirical categories (e.g., raw/cooked,
upstream/downstream, bush/village) or empirical objects (e.g., buffalo, river, gold,
eagle). Some structuralists, such as the French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss,
have emphasized the presence of the same logical patterns in myths throughout the world.

In earlier anthropology, "primitive mentality" was characterized by the inability to make distinctions, by a sense of "mystic participation" or identity between man, his cosmos, and all other beings. Beginning with complex kinship systems and later exploring other taxonomies, structuralists argue to the opposite conclusion: the supposedly primitive man is, if anything, obsessed with the making of distinctions; his taxonomies reveal a complexity and sophistication that rival those of modern man.

Formalist

In contrast to the structuralists' search for the underlying structure of myths, the
20th-century Russian folklorist Vladimir Propp investigated folktales by dividing the surface of their narratives into a number of basic elements. These elements correspond to different types of action that, in Propp's analysis, always occur in
the same sequence. Examples of the types of action isolated by Propp are "An
interdiction is to the hero"; "The interdiction is violated"; "The false hero or villain is exposed"; and "The hero is married and ascends the throne."

An important development of Propp's approach was made in the late 20th century
by the German historian of religion Walter Burkert. Burkert detected certain
recurrent patterns in the actions described in Greek myths, and he related these
patterns (and their counterparts in Greek ritual) to basic biologic or cultural
"programs of action."

An example of this relation is given in Burkert's Structure and
History in Greek Mythology and Ritual (1979). Burkert shows how certain Greek
myths have a recurring pattern that he calls "the girl's tragedy." According to this
pattern, a girl first leaves home; after a period of seclusion, she is raped by a
god; there follows a time of tribulation, during which she is threatened by parents
or relatives; eventually, having given birth to a baby boy, the girl is rescued, and
the boy's glorious future is assured.

The reason for the frequency and
persistence of this pattern is, in Burkert's view, the fact that it reflects a basic
biologic sequence or "program of action"; puberty, defloration, pregnancy,
delivery. Another pattern Burkert explains in a similar way is found in myths about
the driving out of the scapegoat.

This pattern, Burkert argues, stems from a real
situation that must often have occurred in early human or primate history; a group
of men, or a group of apes, when pursued by carnivores, were able to save
themselves through the sacrifice of one member of the group. The persistence of
these patterns through time is explained, according to Burkert, by the fact that
they are grounded in basic human needs--above all, the need to survive.

Functions of Myth and Mythology

Explanation

The most obvious function of myths is the explanation of facts, whether natural or cultural. One North American Indian (Abnaki [Wabanaki]) myth, for example, explains the origin of corn (maize): a lonely man meets a beautiful woman with long, fair hair; she promises to remain with him if he follows her instructions; she tells him in detail how to make a fire and, after he has done so, she orders him to drag her over the burned ground; as a result of these actions, he will see her silken hair (viz., the cornstalk) reappear, and thereafter he will have corn seeds for his use. Henceforth, whenever Abnaki Indians see corn (the woman's hair), they know that she remembers them.

Obviously, a myth such as this one functions as an explanation, but the narrative form distinguishes it from a straightforward answer to an intellectual question about causes. The function of explanation and the narrative form go together, since the imaginative power of the myth lends credibility to the explanation and crystallizes it into a memorable and enduring form. Hence myths play an important part in many traditional systems of education.

Justification or Validation

Many myths explain ritual and cultic customs. According to myths from the island of Ceram (in Indonesia), in the beginning life was not complete, or not yet "human": vegetation and animals did not exist, and there was neither death nor sexuality. In a mysterious manner Hainuwele, a girl with extraordinary gift-bestowing powers, appeared. The people killed her at the end of their great annual celebration, and her dismembered body was planted in the earth. Among the species that sprang up after this act of planting were tubers--the staple diet of the people telling the myth.

With a certain circularity frequent in mythology, the myth validates the very cultic celebration mentioned in the myth. The cult can be understood as a commemoration of those first events. Hence, the myth can be said to validate life itself together with the cultic celebration. Comparable myths are told in a number of societies where the main means of food production is the cultivation of root crops; the myths reflect the fact that tubers must be cut up and buried in the earth for propagation to take place.

Ritual sacrifices are typical of traditional peasant cultures. In most cases such customs are related to mythical events. Among important themes are the necessity of death (e.g., the grain "dies" and is buried, only to yield a subsequent harvest), a society's cyclic renewal of itself (e.g., New Year's celebrations), and the significance of women and sexuality. New Year's celebrations, often accompanied by a temporary abandonment of all rules, may be related to or justified by mythical themes concerning a return to chaos and a return of the dead.

In every mythological tradition one myth or cluster of myths tends to be central. The subject of the central mythology is often cosmogony (origin of the cosmos). In many of those ceremonies that each society has developed as a symbol of what is necessary to its well-being, references are made to the beginning of the world. Examples include the enthronements of kings, which in some traditions (as in Fiji or ancient India) are associated with a creation or re-creation of the world. Analogously, in ancient Mesopotamia the creation epic Enuma elish, which was read each New Year at Babylon, celebrated the progress of the cosmos from initial anarchy to government by the kingship of Marduk; hence the authority of earthly rulers, and of earthly monarchy in general, was implicitly supported and justified.

Ruling families in ancient civilizations frequently justified their position by invoking myths--for example, that they had divine origins. Examples are known from Imperial China, pharaonic Egypt, the Hittite Empire, Polynesia, the Inca Empire, and India. Elites have also based their claims to privilege on myths. The French historian of ancient religion Georges Dum*zil was the pioneer in suggesting that the priestly, warrior, and producing classes in ancient Indo-European societies regarded themselves as having been ordained to particular tasks by virtue of their mythological origins. And in every known cultural tradition there exists some mythological foundation that is referred to when defending marriage and funerary customs.

Description

Inasmuch as myths deal with the origin of the world, the end of the world, or a
paradisiacal state, they are capable of describing what people can never "see for
themselves" however rational and observant they are. It may be that the
educational value of myths is even more bound up with the descriptions they
provide than with the explanations. In traditional, preindustrial societies myths form
perhaps the most important available model of instruction, since no separate
philosophical system of inquiry exists.

Healing, Renewal, and Inspiration

Creation myths play a significant role in healing the sick; they are recited (e.g.,
among the Navajo Indians of North America) when an individual's world--that is to
say, his life--is in jeopardy. Thus, healing through recitation of a cosmogony is one
example of the use of myth as a magical incantation. Another example is the case
of Icelandic poets, who, in singing of the episode in old Norse mythology in which
the god Odin wins for gods and men the "mead of song" (a drink containing the
power of poetic inspiration), can be said to be celebrating the origins of their own
art and hence renewing it.

The poetic aspect of myths in archaic and primitive traditions is considerable.
Societies in which artistic endeavor is not yet specialized tend to rely on mythical
themes and images as a source of all self-expression. Mythology has also exerted
an aesthetic influence in more modern societies. An example is the prevalence of
themes from Greek and Roman classical mythology in Western painting, sculpture,
and literature.

Myth in Culture

Myth and Psychology

One of the most celebrated writers about myth from a psychological standpoint
was Sigmund Freud. In his Die Traumdeutung (1899; The Interpretation of Dreams) he posited a phenomenon called the Oedipus complex, that is, the male child's
repressed desire for his mother and a corresponding wish to supplant his father.
(The equivalent for girls was the Electra complex.) According to Freud, this
phenomenon was detectable in dreams and myths, fairy tales, folktales--even
jokes.

Later, in Totem und Tabu (1913; Totem and Taboo), Freud suggested that
myth was the distorted wish-dreams of entire peoples. More than that, however,
he saw the Oedipus complex as a memory of a real episode that had occurred in
what he termed the "primal horde," when sons oppressed by their father had
revolted, had driven out or killed him, and had taken his wives for themselves.
That subsequent generations refrained from doing so was, Freud suggested, due
to a collective bad conscience.

The relevance of Freud's investigations to the
study of myth lies in his view that the formation of mythic concepts does not
depend on cultural history. Instead, Freud's analysis of the psyche posited an
independent, trans-historical mechanism, based on a highly personal biologic
conception of man. His anthropological theories have since been refuted (e.g.,
totemic [symbolic animal] sacrifice as the earliest ritual custom, which he related
to the first parricide), but his analysis is still regarded with interest by some
reputable social scientists. Criticism, however, has been leveled against the
explanation of myths in terms of only one theme and in terms of the "repression"
of conscious ideas.

Another theorist preoccupied with psychological aspects of myth was the Swiss
psychoanalyst Carl Jung, who, like Freud, was stimulated by a theory that no
longer has much support--i.e., the theory of Lucien Levy-Bruhl, a French
philosopher, associating myth with prelogical mentality. This, according to
L*vy-Bruhl, was a type of thought that had been common to archaic mankind, that
was still common to primitives, and in which people supposedly experienced some
form of "mystical participation" with the objects of their thought, rather than a
separation of subject and object.

Jung's theory of the "collective unconscious,"
which bears a certain resemblance to Levy-Bruhl's theory, enabled him to regard
the foundation of mythical images as positive and creative, in contrast with Freud's
more negative view of mythology. Jung evolved a theory of archetypes. Broadly
similar images and symbols occur in myths, fairy tales, and dreams because the
human psyche has an inbuilt tendency to dwell on certain inherited motifs
(archetypes), the basic pattern of which persists, however much details may vary.

But critics of Jung have hesitated to accept his theory of archetypes as an
account of mythology. Among objections raised, two may be mentioned. First, the
archetypal symbols identified by Jung are static, representing personal types that
conflate aspects of the personality: they do not help to illuminate--in the way that
the analyses of Propp and Burkert do--the patterns of action that myths narrate.
Second, Jungian analysis is essentially aimed at relating myth to the individual
psyche, whereas myth is above all a social phenomenon, embedded in society and
requiring explanation with reference to social structures and social functions.

Myth and Science

Attention has sometimes focused on changes occurring in the way the real world
is apprehended by different peoples and how these changes in "reality" are
reflected in myths. This reality changes continually throughout history, and these
changes have especially occupied philosophers and historians of science, for a
sense of reality in a culture is basic to any scientific pursuit by that culture,
beginning with the earliest philosophical inquiries into the nature of the world.

Though it would perhaps be going too far to identify the images and concepts
that make up a culture's scientific sense of reality with myth, parallels between
science and myth, as well as the presence of a mythological dimension to science,
are generally reckoned to exist.

The function of models in physics, biology, medicine, and other sciences resembles
that of myths as paradigms, or patterns, of the human world. In medicine, for
instance, the human body is sometimes likened to a machine or the human brain to
a computer, and such models are easily understood. Once a model has gained
acceptance, it is difficult to replace, and in this respect it resembles myth, while at
the same time, just as in myth, there may be a great variety of interpretations. In
the 17th century it was assumed that the universe could be explained entirely in
terms of minute corpuscles, their motion and interaction, and that no entities of
any other sort existed.

To the extent that many models in the history of science
have partaken of this somewhat absolutist character, science can be said to
resemble myth. There are, however, important differences. Despite the relative
infrequency with which models in science have been replaced, replacement does
occur, and a strong awareness of the limitations of models has developed in
modern science. In contrast, a myth is not as a rule regarded by the community in
which it functions as open to replacement, although an outside observer might
record changes and even the substitution of a new myth for an old one.

Moreover,
in spite of the broad cultural impact of theories and models such as those of
Newton and Einstein, it is in general true to say that models in science have their
principal value for the scientists concerned. Hence, they function most strongly for
a relatively small segment of society, even though, for instance, a medical theory
held in academic circles in one century can filter down into folk medicine in the
next. As a rule, myth has a much wider impact.

Modern science did not evolve in its entirety as a rebellion against myth, nor at its
birth did it suddenly throw off the shackles of myth. In ancient Greece the
naturalists of Ionia (western Asia Minor), long regarded as the originators of
science, developed views of the universe that were in fact very close to the
creation myths of their time.

Those who laid the foundations of modern science,
such as Nicholas of Cusa, Johannes Kepler, Sir Isaac Newton, and Gottfried Leibniz,
were absorbed by metaphysical problems of which the traditional, indeed
mythological, character is evident. Among these problems were the nature of
infinity and the question of the omnipotence of God. The influence of mythological
views is seen in the English physician William Harvey's association of the circulation
of the blood with the planetary movements and Darwin's explanation of woman's
menstrual cycles by the tides of the ocean.

Several thinkers (e.g., the theologian Paul Tillich and the philosopher Karl Jaspers)
have argued convincingly for a mythological dimension to all science. Myth, in this
view, is that which is taken for granted when thought begins. It is at the same time
the limit reached in the course of scientific analysis, when it is found that no
further progress in definition can be made after certain fundamental principles
have been reached. In recent scientific researches, especially in astronomy and
biology, questions of teleology (final ends) have gained in importance, as distinct
from earlier concerns with questions of origin. These recent concerns stimulate
discussion about the limits of what can be scientifically explained, and they reveal
anew a mythological dimension to human knowledge.

Myth and Religion

Ritual and Other Practices

The place of myth in various religious traditions differs. The idea that the principal function of a myth is to provide a justification for a ritual was adopted without any great attempt to make a case for it. At the
beginning of the 20th century many scholars thought of myths in their earliest
forms as accounts of social customs and values. According to Sir James Frazer,
myths and rituals together provided evidence for man's earliest preoccupation,
namely, fertility.

Human society developed in stages--from the magical through the
religious to the scientific--and myths and rituals (which survived even into the
scientific stage) bore witness to archaic modes of thought that were otherwise
difficult to reconstruct. As for the relationship between myth and ritual, Frazer
argued that myths were intended to explain otherwise unintelligible rituals. Thus, in
Adonis, Attis, Osiris (1906) he stated that the mythical story of Attis'
self-castration was designed to explain the fact that the priests of Attis' cult
castrated themselves at his festival.

In a much more articulate way, biblical scholars stressed the necessity to look for
the situation in life and custom (the "Sitz im Leben") that mythical texts originally
possessed. A number of scholars, mainly in Britain and the Scandinavian countries
and usually referred to as the Myth and Ritual school (of which the best-known
member is the British biblical scholar S.H. Hooke), have concentrated on the ritual
purposes of myths.

Their work has centered on the philological study of the ancient
Middle East both before and since the rise of Islam and has focused almost
exclusively on rituals connected with sacred kingship and New Year's celebrations.
Of particular importance was the discovery that the creation epic Enuma elish was
recited at the Babylonian New Year's festival: the myth was, it was argued,
expressing in language that which the ritual was enacting through action. Classical
scholars have subsequently investigated the relations between myth and ritual in
ancient Greece. Particularly influential has been the study of sacrifice by Walter
Burkert entitled Homo Necans: The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual
and Myth (1983).

Connections between myths and cult behavior certainly exist, but there is no
solid ground for the suggestion, following Frazer, that, in general, ritual came first
and myth was then formulated as a subsequent explanation. If it is only the
subsequent myth that has made the sense of the earlier ritual explicit, the
meaning of the ritual may remain a riddle. There is in fact no unanimous opinion
about which originated first.

Modern scholars are inclined to turn away from the
question of temporal priority and to concentrate instead on the diversity of the
relationship between myth and ritual. While it is clear that some myths are linked
to rituals, so that it makes sense to say that the myth is expressing in the
language of narrative that which the ritual expresses through the symbolism of
action, in the case of other myths no such ritual exists.

The content of important myths concerning the origin of the world usually reflects
the dominant cultural form of a tradition. The myths of hunter-gatherer societies
tell of the origin of game animals and hunting customs; agricultural civilizations tend
to give weight to agricultural practices in their myths; pastoral cultures to pastoral
practices; and so on. Thus, many myths present models of acts and organizations
central to the society's way of life and relate these to primordial times. Myths in
specific traditions deal with matters such as harvest customs, initiation
ceremonies, and the customs of secret societies.

Religious Symbolism and Iconography

Sacred objects are found in all religious traditions, and sacred images in most.
They are the material counterparts of myth inasmuch as they represent sacred
realities of figures, as myths do in narrative form. Representing does not entail
faithful copying of natural or human forms, and in this respect religious symbolism
is again like myth in that both depict the extraordinary rather than the ordinary.
Many symbolic representations have their sources in myths.

Representations in human form, especially "natural" human form, are rare. The sculptures of divine
figures in classical Greece (by sculptors such as Phidias and Praxiteles) are the
exception. Usually the degree of representation occurring in cult practices and
the depiction of mythical themes has been considerably less humanistic. An
example is the way geometric and animal figures abound in the history of religions.
Another example is the use of sacred masks, as in the mysteries of Dionysus, an
ecstatic cult in the Aegean world of classical antiquity, and the indigenous
traditions of Australia, America, prehistoric Europe, and elsewhere.

The Old Testament is usually regarded as embodying much material that
anthropologists would regard as containing mythical themes in just the same way
as the practices of the ancient Greeks, Chinese, or Abnaki Indians are bound up
with myths.

Yet the religion of Israel was in many respects critical of myths (in the
sense of noncanonical, approved narratives). Similarly, it rejected any
representation of God in natural forms. Anti-mythological tendencies exist in the
religions that have their roots in Israel.

The New Testament of Christianity in some
instances derogates myths by describing them as "godless" and "silly." Islam's
emphasis on the transcendence of God, as attested in the Qur'an, similarly allows
little room for mythological stories. The activities of the supernatural beings known
as jinn, however, are acknowledged even by official Islam, besides being prominent
in popular belief (as in The Thousand and One Nights); and other mythological
themes, for example motifs relating to the end of time (eschatology), also figure in
Islamic religion, above all in its Shi'ite form. Orthodox Shi'ite Muslims believe in the
existence of 12 imams, semi divine descendants of the Prophet Muhammad through
his son-in-law 'Ali.

Toward the end of time, according to the beliefs of Shi'ism, the 12th imam will return to bring truth and justice to mankind.

Other traditions with sacred scriptures are more tolerant of myth, for example
Hinduism and Buddhism.

Running through certain central texts of the Hindu sacred
tradition is the theme of the contrast between the One and the Many. Thus, the
philosophical poem known as the Bhagavadgita contrasts the person who sees
Infinity within the ordinary finite world with the person who merely sees the
diversity of appearances.

Yet this ascetic and abstract view by no means
excludes a rich and extraordinarily diverse mythology, which is reflected in the
tremendous variety of Indian religious statuary and which mirrors the religious
complexity of Indian society.

A justification for the coexistence of an ideal of unity
with a pluralistic reality is found in the Rigveda, where it is written that although
God is One the sages give him many names. Buddhism also finds room for
exuberant mythology as well as for the plainer truths of sacred doctrine. Buddhism
embraces not only the teachings of the Buddha about the pursuit of the path to
Enlightenment and Nirvana but also the exotic mythical figures of Yamantaka, who
wears a necklace of skulls, and the grossly fat god of wealth Jambhala.

Myth and the Arts

Oral traditions and written literature

Myths in ancient civilizations are known only by virtue of the fact that they became part of a written tradition.

In the case of Greece, virtually all myths are "literature" in the form in which they have survived, the oldest source being the works ascribed to the Greek poets Homer and Hesiod (usually dated, in written form, to the 8th century BC).

Literary forms such as the epic have frequently served as
vehicles for transmitting myths inasmuch as they present an authoritative account.
The Homeric epics were both an example and an exploration of heroic values, and
the poems became the basis of education in classical Greece. The great epics of
India (Mahabharata and Ramayana) came to function as encyclopedias of
knowledge and provided models for all human existence.

Visual Arts

In principle, the sort of relationship that exists between myth and literature exists
also with respect to the other arts. In the case of architecture and sculpture,
archaeological discoveries confirm the primacy of mythical representations. Among
the earliest known three-dimensional objects built by man are prehistoric
megalithic and sepulchral structures.

Mythological details cannot actually be discerned, but it is generally believed that such structures express mythological concerns and that mythical images dictated the shape.

An especially intriguing example is the stone circle at Stonehenge in southern England. Axes of this construction are aligned with significant risings and settings of the Sun and Moon, but the idea that the circle was built for a religious purpose must remain likely
rather than certain.

Grave monuments of rulers are among the most important remains of ancient civilizations such as the Egyptian pyramids; and the sepulchral structures of Chinese rulers since the Chou Period, c. 1111-255 BC). There is worldwide evidence that in archaic cultures man considered the points of the compass to have mythological
affiliations (e.g., the West and death or the East and a new beginning).

Mythological views even influenced building activity. One architectural feature that
can have mythological significance is the column. In a number of popular traditions
the sky is believed to be supported by one or more columns. The relatively strict
separation between religious and civil architecture that modern man is perhaps
inclined to take for granted has not existed in most cultures and periods and
perhaps is not universal even in modern times.

Even when art ceases to represent mythological matters outright, it is still usually far from representational. That art has ceased to represent mythology is challenged by some theorists, who argue that what seems to be abandonment of mythological forms is really only a change in mythology. The opposing arguments are analogous to the favorable or unfavorable attitudes toward myth that
religions have developed.

Performing Arts

Myth is one of the principal roots of drama. This is particularly obvious in the
earliest Western drama, the tragedies of classical Greece, not only because of the
many mythological subjects treated and the plays' performance at the festival of
Dionysus but also because of the playwrights' mythlike presentation of events and
facts. An example of such presentation is the story pattern, notably the way
retribution follows transgression. Another feature of Greek drama that is relevant
to the subject of myth is the fact that the role of the chorus was taken by a
group of ordinary citizens.

In Greek tragedy the heroic past was presented and
explored by a chorus of nonheroic individuals; hence the meaning of the inherited
myths was examined by a collectivity that can be seen as standing for the wider
collectivity (more than 10,000 in number) that constituted the audience at the
plays. In its songs the chorus frequently had recourse to expressions of a
proverbial kind, using the distilled wisdom of the community to account for the
strange and often disturbing events represented in the plays.

The origins of
drama are obscure, but Theodor Gaster, an American historian of religion, has
suggested that in the ancient eastern Mediterranean world the interrelationship of
myth and ritual created drama. Elsewhere, dramatic presentations (as in Japanese
No plays and the Javanese wayang) are similarly rooted in myth.

Dance has been a medium for the expression of mythological themes throughout
the world and in all periods for which there is evidence. Especially common are
dances aimed at ensuring the continuity of fertility or the success of hunting, at
curing the sick, or at achieving shamanistic trance states. An aspect of the decay
of ritual in the modern West is the tendency for dance to lose its close and direct
connection with the life of the community.

A further consequence is that the role
of dance in embodying and exploring a community's myths has often been
overlooked, and dance may have become further removed from myth than any
other form of art in the Western world. There are important and significant
exceptions, however. One of the most notable is the work of the American
choreographer Martha Graham, who frequently used mythical themes--often drawn
from Greek antiquity--as the inspiration for her ballets.

Music

Myth and music are linked in many cultures and in various ways. For example,
numerous stories ascribe the origins of music to a figure, usually divine, who lived
in the mythical past.

Thus, in ancient Greece the lyre was said to have been invented by the god Hermes, who handed it on to his brother Apollo as part of a bargain. From then on Apollo played the lyre at the banquets of the gods, while the Muses sang to his accompaniment.

The Foundation Tone

An ancient Chinese myth tells of the discovery of the "foundation tone," which, in addition to being a musical note of specific pitch, also had political implications, since each dynasty was thought to
have its own "proper pitch." Tones are an indispensable part of Chinese literature, as characters in poetry and prose were chosen according to tones and rhymes for their euphony. This use of language helps in reconstructing the pronunciation of Old Chinese and Middle Chinese, since the Chinese writing system is logographic. The foundation tone was produced when Ling Lun, the founder of Chinese music and a scholar, went to the western mountain area of China and cut a bamboo pipe in such a way that it produced the correct sound. He is said to have traveled to a distant land and made a set of 12 flutes with bamboo. This set of flutes could produce 12 tones and became the basis of music.

Throughout the world music is played at religious ceremonies to increase the
efficacy and appeal of prayers, hymns, and invocations to divinities. The power of
music to charm the gods is movingly expressed in the Greek story of Orpheus. This mythical figure goes to the underworld to try to have his dead wife, Eurydice, restored to life.

By means of his lyre playing and singing he is able to win over even the god of death, so that Eurydice is allowed to leave the underworld. The continuing potency of the myth (including its tragic conclusion--Orpheus is forbidden to look back at his wife but does so and thus loses her again) is shown by the fact that it has been retold in Europe by numerous composers of opera since the early 17th century.

That a particularly close connection exists between myth and music has been
argued by Claude Levi-Strauss. In an analysis of the myths of certain South American Indians ( 1964; The Raw and the Cooked) he explains that his procedure is "to treat the sequences of each myth, and the myths themselves in respect of their reciprocal interrelations, like the instrumental parts
of a musical work and to study them as one studies a symphony."

His treatment is divided into such subsections as "The 'Good Manners' Sonata," "Fugue of the Five
Senses," and "The Opossum's Cantata." In Myth and Meaning (1978) Levi-Strauss returned to the link between myth and music, which had proved difficult for his readers to understand. To make his point clearer Levi-Strauss took the example of a theme from an opera by Richard Wagner.

Each time the theme is repeated its overall meaning grows clearer, as each instance is superimposed on the others in the series, so that it becomes possible to see what the different occurrences of
the theme have in common. Analogously, the meaning of a myth is found not simply by reading its narrative in sequence, but by superimposing upon one another similar mythical events from one narrative and boiling down each resulting "bundle" to a common denominator. It is the relationship between these bundles that constitutes the logic of the myth.

The use of music for religious ends has declined in modern Western societies, but
mythical themes (e.g., in opera and oratorio) are still used with genuine artistic
effect. The repertoires of late 20th-century opera companies may include, for
example, Giacomo Puccini's Turandot, about a princess who asks her suitors three
riddles and beheads them if they fail to answer correctly and a prince who will die
if his name is discovered; Richard Strauss' Die Frau ohne Schatten ("The Woman Without a Shadow"), about a princess who must gain a shadow or her husband will be turned to stone; and Wagner's TannhSuser, Lohengrin, Der Ring des Nibelungen, and Parsifal, all loosely based on tales from medieval Germanic mythology.

Myth and History

Myth and history represent alternative ways of looking at the past. Defining
history is hardly easier than defining myth, but a historical approach necessarily
involves both establishing a chronological framework for events and comparing
and contrasting rival traditions in order to produce a coherent account.

The latter
process, in particular, requires the presence of writing in order that conflicting
versions of the past may be recorded and evaluated. Where writing is absent, or
where literacy is restricted, traditions embedded in myths through oral
transmission may constitute the principal sources of authority for the past. Hence,
myths may be cited when a situation in the present is materially affected by what
version of the past is accepted.

For instance, if a dispute arises among the Iatmul of Papua New Guinea over the rights of different clans to possess land, the contending parties take part in oral contests involving the recitation of long lists of mythological names and other details from the myths. Since each clan's view of the mythic past has implications for the ownership of estates by persons living in the present, victory in these contests is a matter of direct practical importance to the participants.

Even in societies where literacy is widespread and where a considerable body of
professional historians is at work, it may still be the case that a majority of the
population form their views of the past on the basis of inherited mythlike
traditions. Examples from the 20th century in Europe would be the polarized
communities (Protestant and Roman Catholic) of Northern Ireland, or pro- and
anti-Communist sympathizers in Greece.

In the former case, the two communities
have different and irreconcilable pictures of the events related to the partition of
Ireland. In the latter case, the course of the civil war (after the end of World War
II) is viewed quite differently by the two groups. These rival traditions may be
described as mythlike because they are narratives with a strong validating
function--the function of justifying current enmities and current loyalties--and they
are believed with a quasi-religious faith against which objective historical testing is
all but powerless.

Finally, similarities to myths may be present even in the work of those who are
justifiably described as historians. A clear instance of this is the ancient Greek
writer Herodotus, the so-called "father of history." He had the radically original
idea of writing an account of the struggle between the Greek world and its
"barbarian" neighbours during the Persian Wars, an account that combined and
evaluated a range of disparate and often conflicting pieces of information. On
these grounds he should certainly be described as a historian.

Yet, his work is full
of themes and story patterns that also occur in Greek myths--for example,
transgression against the gods leads to retribution; again, people who live at the
margins of the Greek world are imagined as having customs that are the exact
inverse of their Greek equivalents. In the work of Herodotus there is no
incompatibility between myth and history; both historical events and the patterns
into which such happenings are perceived as falling form part of his overall
enterprise: namely, to conduct an inquiry (the meaning of the Greek word historia)
into the past. As with the distinction between myth and science, then, that
between myth and history is by no means a straightforward one.

Major Types of Myth

Creation Myths

Cosmogony and creation myth are used as synonyms, yet properly speaking,
cosmogony is a preferable term because it refers to the origin of the world in a
neutral fashion, whereas "creation myth" implies a creator and something created,
an implication unsuited to a number of myths that, for example, speak of the origin
of the world as a growth or emanation, rather than an act.

Even the term origin
should be used with caution for cosmogonic events (as well as for other myths
purporting to describe the beginning of things), because the origin of the world
hardly ever seems the focal point of a mythological narrative--as a mythological
narrative is not a matter of inquiry into the first cause of things. Instead,
cosmogonic myths are concerned with origins in the sense of the foundation or
validity of the world as it is.

Creation stories in both primitive and advanced cultures frequently speak of the act of creation as a fashioning of the earth out of raw material that was already present. In African cosmogonies, especially, the earth is preexistent. A creation out of nothing occurs as a theme much less frequently, for all that such creation myths are more satisfying to the philosophical
mind. Philosophical questions, however, are less important in the justificatory systems set up by myth.

Water, though important everywhere as a source of life and image of endless
potentiality, has a special role in Asia and North America, where the creator (often
an animal) is assisted by another figure, who dives for earth in the primordial
ocean.

The earth-diver helper sometimes develops into an opponent, or Satan-like
character, in other areas--e.g., those touched by Zoroastrianism, an ancient
Persian dualistic religion. Though hardly an explanation in the ordinary sense of the
word, the theme accounts for the fact that evil is constitutive of the cosmos
without holding the creator responsible for it. Other widely diffused motifs are: the
cosmogonic egg, found in the Pacific world, parts of Europe and southern Asia
(e.g., in Hinduism); the world parents (usually in the image of sky and earth); and
creation through sacrifice or through a primordial battle. Creation through the
word of the creator also occurs outside the Old Testament account (in Polynesia).

Cosmogony

Cosmogony sets the pattern for everything else in most traditions; other myths are related to it or derived from it. Because man's inhabitable world, the cosmos,
is the crucial issue, no matter how various the contents may be and how different
from one period to another, cosmogony probably is the clearest expression of
man's basic mythological propensity. All cosmogonic accounts have certain formal
features in common. They speak of irreconcilable opposites (e.g., heaven and
earth, darkness and light) and, at the same time, of events or things totally
outside the common range of perception and reason (e.g., a "time" in which
heaven and earth were not yet separated and darkness and light intermingled). In
other words, the basic ingredients of man's world and orientation are
presupposed yet are realized, constituted, or brought about anew in the
narration. The narrative can arrive at such a reconstitution only by transcending
the limits of ordinary perception and reason.

The origin of man is usually linked immediately to the cosmogony. Man, for
instance, is placed on the earth by God, or in some other way his origin is from
heaven. Nevertheless, it is only in mythologies influenced by philosophical
reflections that the place of man becomes the conspicuous centre of the
cosmogony (e.g., Pythagoreanism, a Greek mystical philosophical system; Orphism,
a Greek mystical religious movement; Gnosticism, a Christian dualistic and esoteric
movement; and Tantrism, a Hindu and Buddhist esoteric meditation system).

Man is sometimes said to have ascended from the depths of the earth (as with the Zuni,
an American Indian people) or from a certain rock or tree of cultic significance.
These images are often related to the idea of a realm of ancestors as the origin
of newborn children. Man is also said to be fashioned from the dust of the ground
(as in Genesis) or from a mixture of clay and blood (as in the Babylonian creation
myth). In all cases, however, man has a particular place (because of his duties to
the gods, because of his limitations, or even because of his gifts), even
though--especially in many hunters' civilizations (e.g., the African San peoples and
many North American Indian tribes)--the harmony of man and other forms of nature
is emphasized.

In most cosmogonic traditions the final or culminating act is the creation of man.
The condition of the cosmos prior to man's arrival is viewed as separate and
distinct from the alterations that result from the beginning of the human cultural
world. Creation is thus seen as a process of periods or stages, frequently in a
three-stage model. The first stage consists of the world of gods or primordial
beings; the second stage is the world of the ancestors of man; and the third
stage is the world of man. The three stages are sometimes seen as interrelated;
for example, the gods may be the creators of man or the ancestors of man, or
ancestors may undergo a transformation to become men.

Among innumerable tales of origin, one of the most common types is related to
the origins of institutions. Certain initiation ceremonies or ritual acts are said to
have originated in the beginning, in mythical times, this primeval moment of
inception constituting their validity.

Myths of Eschatology and Destruction

Myths of eschatology deal with "the end." The end is conceived of as the opposite
of the cosmogony; it means first and foremost the origin of death but also, in a
wider sense, the end of the world. Special forms of eschatology are prevalent in
messianism (belief in a future salvation figure) and millenarianism (belief in a
1,000-year reign of the elect).

Myths about the origin of death, for which an added explanation has to be found in
the sense that death is not seen as automatically the end of life, are probably as
widely diffused as creation stories. One of the most common types of such myths
speaks of a primordial time in which death did not exist and explains that it arose
as the result of an error, as a punishment, or simply because the creator decided
the earth would get too crowded otherwise. One example of a myth about the
origin of death may be regarded as characteristic; it occurs, with variations, in
many parts of the world.

Among the Zulus the story is told that the supreme being Unkulunkulu.

Unkulunkulu was the creator god of the Zulu. Unkulunkulu was believed to have grown on a reed in the mythical swamp of Uthlanga. In the Zulu language, the name means "ancestor". The god is in fact a genderless deity, though Biblical translations of the god on the part of Christian missionaries to Southern Africa incorrectly label Unkulunkulu as specifically male.

Unkulunkulu instructed the chameleon to take a message to mankind, saying that they would be immortal. But the chameleon moved slowly, since he stopped to have something to eat (or, according to a variant, basked in the sun and fell
asleep). In due course the supreme being changed his mind and sent a lizard to
men, telling them that they would die. The lizard arrived and delivered his
message. When the chameleon eventually arrived, his message conflicted with
what mankind had already been told by the lizard. The chameleon was not
believed, and men were mortal from then on.

Expectations of a cataclysmic end of the world are also expressed by myths. A
universal conflagration with a final battle and defeat of the gods is part of
Germanic mythology and has parallels in other examples of Indo-European
eschatological imagery. In many "primitive" religions specific expectations about
the end of the world do occur, but until recently they have not received much
scholarly attention. An example of such a belief about the end of the world is
found among the Pawnee Indians. In their view, there will come a time when
everything will disappear and the star of death will govern the world. The Moon will
turn red, the Sun will be extinguished, and men will be turned into stars flying along
the route to heaven now taken by the dead.

Messianic and Millenarian Myths

The hope of a new world surges up from time to time in many civilizations. Many such religious movements flourished in the 20th century in Melanesia, Africa, South America, and Siberia. Christian elements are usually detectable, but the basic element in virtually all cases is indigenous. These cults and movements centre on prophetic leaders, often emphasize the return of the dead at the renewal to come, and are convinced of a catastrophic end of the present world. In many cases, the culture hero is expected to return and lead believers in battle against the evil forces. In the history of Judaism and Christianity, as in many primitive millenarian and messianic movements, there is an expectation of a new heaven and a new earth.

Myths of Culture Heroes and Esoteriological Myths

A great many nonliterate traditions have myths about a culture hero most notably
one who brings new techniques or technology to mankind--e.g., Prometheus, who
supplies fire to mankind in Greek Mythology.

A culture hero is generally not the person responsible for the creation but the one who completes the world and makes it fit for human life; in short, he creates culture.

Another example of a culture hero is Maui in Polynesia, who brought islands to the surface from the bottom of the sea, captured and harnessed the Sun, lifted the sky to allow man more room, and, like Prometheus, gave fire to mankind.

The bringer of culture is often also the bringer of health. Thus, the culture hero of the Woodlands and Plains Indians in North America is at the same time related to the foundation of the medicine society linked to Shamanism.

A comparable figure occurs in many traditions of classical antiquity or the Mediterranean basin generally as the "good son"--e.g., Horus, the son of the god Osiris in Egypt, or the figure of the king in the Psalms.

Health and (spiritual) salvation are synonymous, and this is implied in the Greek word soter, which can mean both "savior" and "preserver from ill health."

Related to soteriological myths in many cases is the hope for a final and total salvation in which the "good" powers will triumph, such as through Saoshyant, the savior in Zoroastrianism.

In fact, Zoroastrianism shared with the Judeo-Christian tradition the notion of a Last Judgment followed by the ultimate salvation of the world. According to Zoroastrian belief, as the end approached heroes from the past would come to life and help in the struggle of good against evil. Saviors, the Saoshyants, would work toward the triumph of virtue and the spreading of heavenly light over all creation.

Myths of Time and Eternity

The apparent regularity of the heavenly bodies long impressed every society. The sky was seized as the very image of transcendence, and what seemed to be the orderly course of Sun, Moon, and stars suggested a time that transcended man's eternity. Many myths and mythological images concern themselves with the relationship between eternity and time on earth.

The Zoroastrians of ancient Persia knew of a complete world age of 12,000 years, divided into four periods of 3,000 each, at the end of which Ormazd (Wise Lord) would conquer Ahriman (Destructive Spirit).

Similarly, the Book of Daniel (in the Old Testament) mentions four kingdoms--of gold, silver, bronze, and a mixture of iron and clay, respectively--after which God will establish an everlasting kingdom. The notion of
four world ages, sometimes associated with metals, occurs also in the works of
classical writers and in later speculative writings on human history.

Judaism developed the view of a 1,000-year period between the four world ages and the
everlasting kingdom (hence the words millennium and millenarian). Although other numbers occur (three, six, seven, 12, and 72), four is dominant.
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In ancient Mexico this world was held to be preceded by four other worlds.

India, in both Hindu and Buddhist texts, has developed the most complex system of world ages and worlds that arise and come to an end. Here, too, the number four is important--e.g., the four ages (yugas) of decreasing length and increasing evil. Many writings, often with large numbers, reflect exact astronomical observations and calculations.

Some mythologies--e.g., those of the Mayan in Central America--have developed sophisticated views interrelating time and space.

Mythological accounts of repetitions of worlds after their destruction occur not only in India but also elsewhere, such as in Orphism and in the Stoic philosophy that flourished in classical antiquity.

Myths of Providence and Destiny

In attitudes to the idea of a link between human activity and the stars, the most
familiar example of which is probably astrology, there is a broad range of mythical
motifs between astrological calculations (in the sense of an attempt at an
intellectualized account of what is happening) and devotional self-surrender. There
are many occasions at which a man may be filled with doubt about his own fate or
the fate of his community. In some myths divine supremacy is marked by a god's
mastery over fate.

There is no doubt about Zeus' supremacy in the Greek poet Hesiod's genealogical account of the gods, yet in the works of Homer, Zeus is powerless to defy fate and save the life of his son Sarpedon. Mythological views of providence, destiny, or fate are given precise shades of meaning dominant views in a tradition concerning justice and divine law, the philosophical problem of determinism, the theological problems of theodicy (justification of a good god with observable facts of evil), and
predestination.

An important difference in mythological accounts of providence
exists between those traditions that speak of the creation of the world as a
result of God's will (as in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) and those that attribute
worldly phenomena to causation by a lesser being (as Buddhism does).

Myths of High Beings and Celestial Gods

Supreme celestial deities occur in many mythologies, with various qualities and
attributes, in many shapes, and with great diversity in cultic significance. A cardinal
distinction exists between the supreme being in many archaic or polytheistic
traditions and the God of the great monotheistic systems (Judaism, Christianity,
and Islam). Even though certain qualities seem alike in many cases (e.g.,
transcendence, omniscience), the God of the latter arose historically in a reaction
to polytheistic views and practices and demonstrates his supremacy accordingly,
whereas the more archaic types of supreme beings nowhere show that
aggressive aspect in their mythologies.

The exalted status of archaic supreme beings and celestial gods does not necessarily involve exclusion of other supreme beings.

Outstanding examples are Vishnu, Shiva, and the great goddess in Hindu literature, who are each described as supreme yet do not reduce the "reality" of the others. "Supremacy" is not as unambiguous and general a term as it seems,
and in Hinduism it refers first and foremost to the perfection (i.e., the idea that a
deity is supremely perfect) of a deity in himself.

The sky seen as a sacred entity is an all but universal belief. It is often related to
or identical with the highest divinity. Nevertheless, supreme beings are always
more than what can be explained from celestial phenomena alone, for they are
often called creators of the world, founders of the order of the world, and
protectors of law; and they are praised for their eternity and goodness.

Often, the supreme being that created the world does not--or has ceased to--receive
attention in the cult, although he may still be invoked in moments of great crisis. In
a good many ancient agricultural societies, the idea of a great goddess prevailed
instead of a male creator-god. The great goddess (as in the ancient Middle East
and India) is venerated principally because of her omnipotence, especially her
power over life.

The sky god-creator sometimes cedes to a divinity who is also
related to the sky but apparently is experienced more concretely because of his
activity.

Such a divinity (especially in pastoral cultures) can be a god of
atmospheric phenomena (storm, rain, thunder, or lightning), whose power for the
good of the people is extolled. In spite of his power, however, he is one of
several gods, and in some cases (Yahweh in ancient Israel and Allah in Islam) one
such god retains the full creative function of early creator gods, and in him all
"true" divinity is concentrated. In addition, a divinity related to the Sun rather than
the heavens can assume preeminence; this has happened in some ancient imperial
traditions (e.g., Egypt, Inca Empire).

Among sky gods who remained important in the mythologies of ancient civilizations are Zeus in Greece, Jupiter in Rome, and T'ien in China.

Myths Concerning Founders of Religions and Other Religious Figures

Although the founders of great religions (Confucius, Zoroaster, the Buddha,
Moses, Jesus, Mani, Muhammad) are generally conceded to have had actual
existence, information about them is couched in legendary terms that have many
mythological features. The same is true of many other religious figures (prophets,
saints, or gurus [Hindu spiritual teachers]). Those traditions that have preserved
the memory of their founders have, as a rule, carefully emphasized the elements
that function most mythologically, in the sense that they state categorically
realities that could not be known in any ordinary fashion or that raise the founder
above ordinary historical conditions.

Examples are the account of Jesus' prayer in Gethsemane, which no one heard according to the text itself, his statement that
he was before Abraham, and his prophecies. Buddhist texts state that the Buddha
not merely surpassed all yogis in knowledge of previous existences but, in fact,
had conquered time. Well known too are his predictions concerning the course
and decline of Buddhism and (in Mahayana texts) his promises as to the future
spiritual attainments of the bodhisattvas. Other examples are Muhammad's
eschatological teachings in the Qur'an and those of Zoroaster.

Myths of Kings and Ascetics

Genuine myths concerning kings are found only in traditions that know a form of
sacred kingship. Temple records from ancient Babylon mention offerings to kings
who were considered divine. Hymns addressed to them make references to the
king's union with a goddess--i.e., the mythological motif of the "sacred marriage."
One of the epithets for the king in ancient Egypt was "endowed with life" or
"imparting life." The twofold meaning of the epithet is significant and can serve to
make the mythology of sacred kingship understandable in other places as well,
because the function of the king is in fact double.

He mediates between the divine world and the world of man, representing each to the other. Hence, in Egypt a sacrifice by an individual was understood as offered to the king and at the same time by the king. The king's role of mediator and protector brings royal mythologies close to myths of culture heroes. Solemn procedures in which kings
become divinities occur relatively late in history.

An early and most conspicuous case of such an apotheosis (becoming divine) is that of Alexander the Great, who
was called a god in his lifetime. Later, apotheosis took place for Roman emperors,
although there are no cases of an emperor being accorded divine honours in his
lifetime.

A great many legends have accumulated around the figures of kings (e.g.,
around King Asoka of India and King Arthur in Britain).

Stories about the Holy Roman emperor Frederick I Barbarossa and Charlemagne have a somewhat eschatological mythical flavor, because they are said to dwell each in his mountain
(in the KyffhSuser and the Untersberg, respectively) until they appear again to act
as saviours in a crisis.

Most narratives about great ascetics, as well as other saints, could be regarded
as legends rather than myths. There are, however, instances of saints or ascetics
who are presented as a more than worldly model, so that a case can be made for
the mythological function of their legends (e.g., al-Hallaj in Islam and St. Francis in
Christianity). In the case of traditions that have asceticism as an integral part,
certain figures and the legends around them do indeed function as exemplars.

Myths of Transformation

Countless stories exist concerning the origin of peculiar rocks, properties of
animals, plants, stars, or other features in the world. In addition to such etiologic
tales there are several myths that speak of cosmic changes brought about at the
end of primordial times. An altogether different and extensive mythology exists
concerning initiation rites and other "rites of passage" that involve transformation
of man's being.

Cosmic transformation may concern an original world, without proper human means
of existence and without death, that was transformed through a certain event
(e.g., the death of Hainuwele, a type of primal being known as a dema, or
ancestral, deity) into the world known to mankind, a truly inhabitable world with
vegetation, animals, and other features that had not existed before.

On a wider scale are myths that could be appendages to cosmogonic myths but
that have not turned into mere etiologies.

Many myths akin to the type of the
dema deity like Hainuwele, The Coconut Girl and to the culture-hero type - like Prometheus - account for events, such as the invention of agriculture, domestication of animals, and the use of fire that have transformed the world for the benefit of man.

Many others are just as closely related to cosmogonic accounts but tell of "setbacks" in
primordial times. In agricultural societies, for example, myths have been collected
that ascribe the unevenness of land or the formation of mountains to an ancient
mishap or evil force.

In rites of passage (e.g., rites accompanying birth, attainment of maturity,
marriage, death) the contents of myths are acted out. In each case the intention
behind the rites is that man's mode of being be affected, indeed transformed.
Through the birth ceremony the child "becomes" a person, and through initiation an
adolescent "becomes" an adult, a member of a sodality, or a warrior. There is a
great variety of customs in different communities and traditions, but everywhere
these rites dramatize graphically the cosmic processes and realities expressed in
language in myths.

In many traditions the myths of the community are conveyed to
the novice at the time of his initiation. Even in the major world religions rites of
passage are still performed, as evidenced in such ceremonies as circumcision,
Baptism, weddings, and mortuary rites. In all instances, the rites derive their
meaning from the core of the tradition, and for that reason man's existence is
regarded as transformed. In some cases the transformation derived from the
dominant myth is far-reaching.

The initiated shaman is able to transcend the
ordinary human condition and overcome dangers that would cause the death of a
noninitiate. Through his initiation he is believed to have gone through death and
thus conquered it.

In certain Hermetic (an occult magical tradition) and Gnostic texts the certainty of attaining divine being is clearly expressed.

Myth in Modern Society

Secularization of Myth and Mythology

Deciding the extent to which there has actually been any secularization of myth
involves a problem of definition. If myth is seen as the product of a past era, it is
difficult to determine at what actual moment that era ended. Thus, it is virtually
impossible to state precisely when a certain mythical theme becomes a mere
literary theme or to determine in general when myths are no longer being created.
It is more fruitful to recognize that symbols, myths, and rituals are all subject to
change over time.

Nor is secularization an irreversible process. It is instead a
process that takes place time and again. Secularization movements and
movements toward "mythification" of a phenomenon, narrative, or idea are aspects
of the same historical processes. There have also been many types of
secularization; the one brought about in Western society since the Middle Ages is
only a single example.

Another instance was the development in archaic and
classical Greece (sometimes referred to--with great oversimplification--as a
movement "from myth to reason") whereby fundamental questions about the
nature of the universe came increasingly to receive answers in terms of
philosophical, as opposed to mythical, reasoning.

On the other hand, although the secularization of modern times is not a unique
phenomenon, it is a new and complex type, to which many factors have
contributed. Scientific, particularly astronomical, discoveries of the late medieval
and Renaissance periods were accompanied by a new trust in cosmic laws and an
increasingly abstract notion of God.

More or less Euhemeristic historical accounts that were common in the Middle Ages and were a symptom of a certain secularization process themselves gave way to history writing, focusing on psychological, social, and economic facts.

In philosophy, naturalism of various sorts opposed notions of transcendence that earlier systems had taken for granted. The most common tendency in modern society has been to regard the characters and events in mythical accounts as not real or as by-products of realities that are not transcendent but rather immanent.

This secularization in modern society, like earlier secularization processes, is
accompanied by a process whereby new myths are formed (see below Political
and social uses of myth).

Demythologization of major religious traditions

Demythologization should be distinguished from secularization. Every living
mythology must come to terms with the world in which it is transmitted and to that
extent inevitably goes through processes of secularization.

Demythologization, however, refers to the conscious efforts people make to purify a religious
tradition of its mythological elements. The term demythologization
(Entmytho-logisierung) was coined by Rudolf Bultmann, a German theologian and
New Testament scholar. In the strict sense of the word, demythologizing efforts
have been limited to theological discussions in 20th-century Christianity.

Even after secularization has taken place a certain mythological residue may
persist. Edward B. Tylor, one of the founders of anthropology as an academic
discipline in the 19th century, coined the use of the word survival for customs and
beliefs that continued to be adhered to long after the context in which they had
had their meaning had ceased to exist.

Because such customs and beliefs may be
regarded as mere superstitions, the word survival usually has a slightly
derogatory overtone. There are many survivals of myth in this sense. The myth of
"the noble savage," well-known from the 18th-century writer Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, can be understood as a survival of a paradisiacal mythology: Western
man expecting to find evidence of paradise on earth.

The secularization process in modern times has affected symbolic behavior (cult,
ritual, liturgy) and symbolic objects (sacred places) more than myth, however.
Nevertheless, commonly accepted forms of mythology in modern society do not
permeate all parts of society or fulfill all needs. (In all likelihood, no society has
ever been perfectly homogeneous in its myths.)

At the same time there exist
profound mythological needs in modern society, and some are filled by myths
borrowed from submerged or alien traditions.

Modern society's neglect of cosmic
symbolism (which in contrast was widespread in archaic tradition) has provoked
certain reactions, such as the continuing interest in astrology, which may even be
seen as an attempt to present a coherent account of the cosmos. And the huge
scientific advances of the 20th century have given rise to a literature, science
fiction, that resembles myth, even down to an eschatological element.

Political and Social Uses of Myth

In the industrialized Western society of the 20th century, myths and related types
of tales continue to be told. Urban folklorists collect stories that have much in
common with the tales collected by the Grimm brothers, except that in the modern
narratives the lone traveler is likely to be threatened, not by a werewolf, but by a
phantom hitchhiker, and the location of his danger may be a freeway rather than a
forest.

Computer games use sophisticated technology to represent quests
involving dragons to be slain and princesses to be saved and married.

The myth of Superman, the superhuman hero who saves the world and preserves "the
American way," is a notable image embodying modern Americans' confidence in the
moral values that their culture espouses. Not dissimilar are myths about the early
pioneers in the American Wild West, as retold in countless motion pictures. Such
stories often reinforce stereotypical attitudes about the moral superiority of the
settlers to the native Indians, although sometimes such attitudes are called into
question in other movies that attempt to demythologize the Wild West.

A particular illustration of the power that myths continue to exert was provided as
late as the 1940s by the belief in the existence of an Aryan racial group, separate
from and superior to the Semitic group. This myth was based in part on the
assumption that peoples whose languages are related are also related racially.

The fact that this assumption is spurious did not prevent the Aryan myth from
gaining wide acceptance in Europe from the 18th century onward, and it was
eventually to provide a supposed intellectual justification for the persecution of
the Semitic Jews by their Aryan Germanic "superiors" during the period of Nazi
domination. This episode suggests that, in politics, a myth will take hold if it serves
the interests and focuses the aspirations of a particular group; the truth or falsity
of the myth is irrelevant. In a sense, of course, this function is merely an extension
of its more general role in religion, where a myth, as well as addressing questions
such as a society's place in the cosmos, may serve to justify a particular kind of
governmental organization.

Although politics is often regarded as having taken over the role once played by
religion or myth in Western society, the situation is more complex than such a
generalization would imply. Just as myth has always had a strong social and
political element, so political movements and theories have mythical dimensions.
For instance, a mythological component has always been important in keeping
political units together, from villages to nations.

Recently, however, this mythical
dimension has gained prominence with the rise of competing mythlike ideologies
such as capitalism and communism; the word ideology might indeed be replaced, in
much contemporary discussion about politics, by the term mythology. Finally,
crucial terms in modern sociopolitical discussion, such as freedom and equality,
although they have a long and complex philosophical history, are often posited in a
manner analogous to the function of myth presenting its own authority.